We have built with them. My advice for anyone is to stay away from them. They are expensive to start with but any changes just gets more expensive. They are slow builders and very poor communicators. The guy at the Display home is friendly and a great guy, but his job ends when you sign the contact. From then on you get to deal with the Builder, dishonest at best! I was so surprised to find the contract does not include a single TV point! This is extra and we weren't told so once we had to add one after contract, the cost was outrageous. They are so many other examples, I could go on and on. They take full advantage of you when they can.

Thanks Sco for your respond. We are in the stage of paying second deposit but the builder is not able to provide actual month to start construction. How is going with your building experience? Is the new house completed?

We paid 2nd deposit June 2016 then it went through council and that's where it stopped for a long time. Council and Sydney Water took 3-4 months to approve our plans. We didn't end up signing contracts until December 2016. They then went on Xmas break and building started end of January 2017.

Thanks, Scott. That is quite a long process. 6 months for contract sign off + 18 months building period. Understand it was caused by steep site and sandstone. Our site is in Sydney north shore. The land is slopping with 1.5m drop.

You shouldn't really count time you pay deposit to the time you sign the contract. There are many factors out of the builders control here including council approvals, sydney water approvals, construction certificate etc etc. What you should look at is time contract signed until completion date.

Their standard build time is 12 months. Ours is particularly long as we had 3 months of excavation digging a complete 3rd level/basement level in solid sandstone. We also suffered set backs in March as it rained the entire month. Our site slopes about 5-6 metres.

How is going with your new house building? We signed the formal contract with Charleston Home on 20th Dec 2017. Now the old house has been demolished on 6th February. Do you know how long we need to wait for the start of construction work? Thanks!

Very exciting that things are starting to happen for you. Our build has been very slow but the work has been great so far. Charleston are just finished on the exterior and will be moving inside after nearly 12 months. But we do have a very large build and our basement level nearly took 6 months on its own.

Once your old house is gone they should be pretty quick in getting a slab down within the next month or so (as long as you don't have a really steep block like ours). Then the frame should only take 2-3 weeks.

CheersScott

Last edited by sco77k on Mar 29, 2018 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.